This post was contributed by guest author: Martin Laird

Martin Laird is a professional writer. When he\'s not dealing with the demands of fatherhood or the pressure from his job, he works on a new DIY project in his garden or home.

10 SHARES

Advertisement

No matter how late you are staying downtown with your friends, the apartment will always be waiting for you. It is your sanctuary where the rules are entirely made by yourself, and only beloved people are allowed inside. Thus the apartment should be kept tidy so that your inner energy can redirect to personal thoughts and tasks.

There are such things as little tricks that can keep your apartment tidy for a longer period. While daily chores are repeating themselves over and over again, here are 10 tips that help you organize your place with long lasting effects.

1. Clean on the go

The most exhausting chore in the kitchen is not cooking exotic or complicated recipes, but cleaning out the dishes. But there is a trick to make the pile of dishes vanishes more quickly.

Make sure you clean the dishes during the cooking process. If we think back to what there is that make the dish cleaning process so annoying is that we usually do this task after we enjoy our eating. After finishing the food, you feel a little sleepy and doing the dishes is the least thing you would want to do.

So, this is why the dish cleaning should be happening while you cook. At the end of your meal time, all there would be left to is cleaning the plates and cutlery you ate with.

2. Different Way of Folding

What makes the wardrobe get so quickly disorganized is the way the clothes are folded. Usually, people fold they clothes in a flat square shape and arrange them one over the other. This looks all nice and well organized on day one, but later on, when the most underneath piece of clothing is needed, all the above clothes should get moved away. In just a couple of days, the wardrobe can become a mess again.

The trick here is to roll up your clothes. There are many advantages of this tip. The process is quick, the clothes are in no danger of wrinkling, they even take up less space that with the traditional folding. But most importantly, they will keep the wardrobe tidy. So, whenever you need that stylish pair of pants from the bottom of the closet, you can move away from the other clothes without breaking down their rolled shape.

3. Five-minute Session of Cleaning

Reorganizing the entire apartment in the same day may look very time-consuming. However, chunking the process down to a couple of random 5 minutes of cleaning in a day will do the trick. Usually, people have a particular image where the cleaning is a long process, and they are postponing it as much as possible. However, going for small yet frequent cleaning chores will eliminate the regular exhausting hours while the apartment will look tidy all the time.

You can activate these five minutes whenever you feel like it. The most accessible moments are when you walk in the door or during a commercial that interrupted your favorite TV show. These are the perfect spare minutes when you can put all the things back where they belong.

4. The Magic Eraser

There’s one such product on the market that can wipe out any dirty surface. It looks like a sponge, and its secret weapon is the melamine foam. It works like an abrasive cleaner, and it is similar to fine sandpaper.

Where other products fail to live up to the expectations, the magic eraser will wipe out the dirt in a matter of seconds. With a little water, this product can destroy any stain. And it is so fast, that it’s like the stain was never there.

5. Out with the “Laundry Day.”

People usually dedicate an entire day of the week just for the purpose of laundry. However, the piles of dirty clothes are getting bigger and bigger as time goes by. After a week since the last wash up, the laundry basket is overflowing and the washing machine should be working for several times in a row.

So, delaying laundry chores might not be a good idea for keeping your apartment tidy. The trick is again to chunk the task down in several processes. Once the laundry basket has reached its peak, it’s a good signal to load the washing machine. No matter how tired you are, it is easy to organize the clothes from one washing machine load.

6. The Power of the Vacuum

Even though space doesn’t make the things that clutter up the room to magically disappear, it still has an outstanding job in the mission of a tidy apartment.

Make it a habit of taking the vacuum out for a ride every weekend. This will encourage you to put all the things that cover your floor to their place. The image of your home looks too cluttered up when the floor is not as empty as it should be. But with the help of the vacuum, your home will quickly look tidier.

7. Invest in Furniture with Storage Space

One of the best ways to create a shortcut to a tidy apartment is to cover the walls with cupboards and shelves. Every object you own has to have its predetermined place in the house, and leaving some of your stuff on tables or floor is not recommended no matter how well organized they look.

The storage pieces go best on the walls because otherwise, the apartment will look too cluttered. The floor remains tidy and empty while things are deposited on the upper part of the apartment. This way, the rooms will have a more spacious feeling and the piles of objects that can be so easily knocked down by mistake are going from sight. These shelves and cupboards can also be covered in Velcro so that you can store the things without the worry of losing their track in cluttered storage spaces.

8. Conscious Shopping

Many products are so beautifully displayed in the shops, that they are too enticing not to take them. However, a session of purchase should be carried on mindfully.

A new piece of furniture might look beautiful in the living room, but the question is: it is necessary? Of course, we don’t purchase products just for their utility features as we like to be surrounded by beautiful views. However, the benefits of a clean house are too many to ignore.

There are only a limited number of objects a room can take. So, either replace the old stuff with new stuff or reconsider the purchase decision. This will prevent the apartment from looking too cluttered, even though all the elements are organized.

9. Make a Monthly Purge of the Apartment

The golden rule of a tidy apartment is if you have never used a sure thing in the last year, then it means that it is of no use to you anymore. So, the next judicious step would be to get rid of it.

Many things keep our apartment full when in fact, we need only a limited number of stuff to live with. One common reason why people end up with too much is that most of them have sentimental value. Maybe this was given to you as a gift from your best friend or was purchased during your first exotic trip. No matter the reason, a home should be filled only with useful things (besides the decorations).

So, if you can’t just throw things out, you can always sell them or donate them to a person that would use them more than you do.

10. Now is the best moment

Even though we’d rather enjoy ourselves than get started with the cleaning. There’s no better time to tidy up our apartment than the present. In the long run, the effects of taking care of your home with the 5-minute rule will keep a constant image of a tidy apartment.

So, these are the 10 tips that will help you to keep your apartment tidy for a longer period with no significant effort. I would also love to hear from you in the comments and share your tricks of organizing your house.